Priorities (Warning- Heavy Subject Matter)

I was a weak girl growing up. Stubborn, but weak. Sometimes it's easy to get confused and interpret obstinacy as strength. But my angry, silent grit was not strength when I was a teenager. I was simply rebellious, restless, and in pain. It took me a very long time to understand the world, figure out a way to co-exist with it, and move past things that hurt me. Since I was growing used to the intensity of the negative things I seemingly drew to my early life, it was going to take an awful experience- something a person never truly comes back from- to finally teach me what my priorities should be. I was a tough case.

I was sexually assaulted in my teens. But that wasn't the awful experience. I found a way to deal with and heal myself from sexual assault. I was still alive, I was fortunately still healthy; there were just some superficial wounds on the outside. I was not going to allow some stranger's delusional state of mind and an unwanted body part rule the rest of my life and my decisions. Delusional, because this man was a drug addict, coming down from something nasty. He'd entered the place where I lived at the time, and his dealer, my landlord, was unavailable. So he flipped. I never knew who he was, and I never saw him again. This was my life, and I wasn't going to let him have it. And that's the key phrase in this post- It was my life.

It was my life. I was alive and breathing. He was gone. I had the power to react any way I wanted. After the confusion started to clear, I searched my mind and soul for a way to heal. Maybe it took a little while, but I was fine. Nobody took my life away from me. That is what was important. "The Awful Experience" came later, in my late thirties.

Without going into detail, because even after all these years I still don't trust giving too much information away, I was held at gunpoint by a large man in my home. I figured out quickly that he was very intelligent and (temporarily) mentally unstable. So much so, that there was no point trying to reason. This was a the most life threatening situation I'd ever seen up close. I learned extremely valuable lessons from it, and that's why I'm writing about it. Normally, I keep darker things to myself because I don't like upsetting people. A lot of folks seem to have a hard time handling intense confessions. I feel I lived through this for a reason, though. I don't know what that reason is, but something invisible that whispers in my ear at night compels me to make it public. It has grated on me for a long time. And so I'm finally doing my job and passing the lesson along. The details aren't necessary anyway. The lesson is. Maybe this is being told through me for one person out there somewhere. I don't know. I'm just a messenger at this point in my life. I've graduated through the rough stuff, and I'm working on another level.

When it happened, I found myself handcuffed to a piece of furniture, barrel between my eyes. It took about 5 minutes to learn words did no good. It took ten more to learn that expressing fear was making it worse, causing his stress to elevate. He was more confused than I was. In the last 12 hour leg, which came days or weeks later (I honestly don't remember), we were in a car, driving across state borders. The gun was in his hand. He was speeding and taking reckless curves. I began my attempt to think through the situation, as the drive was buying me time. As the beautiful, blue and sunny sky flashed by my window, I came to the realization this was the last day of my life on this gorgeous earth. It was a very somber moment. The fear was still there, but there was a new emotion added to it. It was the feeling that this was the most unfair, absolutely sinful thing a person could do. It was the most perverted violation. I was falling into a black nothingness, and there would soon be no more of me. This was different than the death from predators hunting for food. I was stalked once by a large mountain lion for miles in the dark. I felt I'd die that evening, too, but that fear had an entirely different energy to it. It felt natural. It felt organic. It was acceptable. But this- this wasn't acceptable. There was something very, very bad about this... Intension.

After over seven hours passed in the car, I realized how exhausted I was becoming. That much adrenaline caused by fear, confusion, mood swings, anger, and forcefully trying to contemplate a way out had taken a toll. I was feeling about twenty emotions a minute, and desperately clinging to the notion that there had to be some way to survive. That was the point in which I began to change; a feeling similar to coming down off of a high. I was tired. Everything was dark. I was in Hell. I should just close my eyes and let it come. Anything, even death, was better than feeling all these terrible things for hours and hours and hours..

But just as I began to give in, an inner light came from some secret place and illuminated something within me. It was as if another entity had entered my soul and lit a candle so I could see in the dark. I immediately felt the connection to it. I'd given up, and this entity knew it. But it wasn't time for me to go, and I wasn't on my own anymore. I was suddenly bombarded by a vision. Everything that was happening in the car vanished. I was taken to another plane. The light was warm, and it showed me a way out. It was a solution similar to something so old and so primitive that it didn't even belong in this world anymore. In this vision, there were no morals or decisions or human mental confusion weighing me down. There was only a chase.

I was a rabbit. This man was a wolf. There was a large tree. The chase had come to this tree, and we had been running in circles around its girth for hours. The rabbit was getting tired, and the wolf was gaining. If the rabbit stopped, or even slowed down for a breath, the wolf would have its dinner. I had to keep running. No matter how tired I was, I couldn't quit. Never quit. Keep moving. Don't even think. Just run. Keep doing anything, even if that anything doesn't make sense. Just don't stop. If you stop, you will die. This gave me a second wind, and I unexpectedly advanced to a state of mind that ran like a human machine prepped for combat, scouring the situation and sizing up the possible responses. Primitive was now mixed with thoughts. I was mentally working on a level that I'd never reached before in my life. I didn't want to die. I was NOT going to die. This man; this confused, sick man, was not going to disrupt the natural order of what was supposed to happen. He did not have the right. Not today.

My brain was working with a swiftness I'd never experienced before. I was tuned into his thoughts. It was as though I could read his thoughts. I could smell him. I could taste him. He was mine. This chase had suddenly become incredibly intimate, and I wasn't feeling afraid of it anymore. The rabbit turned into the wolf, the wolf turned into the rabbit, and we began moving backwards. With a newfound lease on his state of mind, I understood his delusion. And from that, I knew what to say. I said it, and I felt the car slow down. His grip on the wheel relaxed. I knew I'd won my life back.

While it wasn't over, I was sure at this point I'd get myself out alive. And I did. The moral to the story? No matter how hopeless a situation is, do NOT- repeat, do not ever give up hope. Giving up is a death sentence. If you want something, you keep moving. You keep going, and you don't let anything or anyone remove your will to go on. There lives something deep within us that is still there; a connection to something so strong and so eternal that we'd probably lose our minds if we ever had the chance to look it in the eye. It's there, and it will help you if you need it. The other moral is this: There is something much more important than arguments or money or even romantic dramas. That thing is your life. Life is a gift from this thing that I don't know how to name. Life is a mysterious, astonishing gift that defies reason. There is nothing else more important; not that job, not any reputation, and not getting to the store before they close on Christmas eve. There is nothing more valuable in this world than your life. It was given to you for a reason. It's something beautiful, and it is forever. I don't care how we got here, or why we exist; I just care that I am still alive, and nothing and no one will ever take precedence over my life again.

Now let's come back down. I know this was a heavy post, but all of life isn't so heavy. Christmas is coming. Although I never really celebrated it until late in life, seeing the excitement on so many peoples' faces seems to light back up the world. I like joining in the romance of it. I like sprinkling cardamom over my coffee, sitting in front of a flame, reading novels, eating sugar cookies and thinking about Christmas. It doesn't take much to amuse me these days. There's a miraculous beauty in the smallest of moments. We don't have to bombard each other with too many texts and demands, and we don't have to pressure ourselves so much. The cold, dark winter is telling us it might be time to quiet down and take in smaller rewards. In other words, relax, kitten!